And part of sex then was relationships, just as it is today. Now there were some clear differences between then and now: there weren’t the range of contraceptives which free people from the possibility of pregnancy (that’s not to say the ancients did not have their methods, they just weren’t as effective as ours today); there wasn’t the expectation that you’d pop into the local place of worship and borrow the sacred prostitute, male or female, as you preferred.

If we are honest, the BBC programme Rome, which we’ve all been secretly watching is right: the Romans had long been at it on a regular basis. As the Daily Telegraph headline helpfully described the programme, Bonkus Maximus. And Ancient Near Eastern cultures were not dissimilar, but God’s people, Israel, were to stand out from the crowd.

Why is the OT so hot on sexuality, sexual relationships and marriage relationships, of which our reading is only a part?

The primary purpose of marriage in biblical times was the production of an heir. No heir meant that there was no-one to look after the couple as they got older, no-one to inherit the God-given Promised Land inheritance, no-one to inherit the goods and property.

The ANE had a number of customs by which to get round this:-
a) Adoption (Gen 15:2 - Abram said, "O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.")
b) Surrogacy (Gen 16:1-4 - Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her." Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
c) Levirate obligation (Gen 38 – Er and Onan, Deut 25:5-10)
d) Temporary custodianship (Num 36:2-12 – Zelophedad’s daughters and husbands wait for grandson to officially inherit).

So in all this need for an heir, and a right heir – one from one’s own seed, so to speak – there was unsurprisingly a strong obligation on pre-marital virginity and on marital fidelity throughout the ANE. The purpose of ANE legislation was to protect the husband’s name and to ensure the integrity of his offspring and therefore his household.

So in our reading tonight, we see divorce discouraged, adultery discouraged and incest discouraged, and these are counter-balanced by the encouragement of sexual purity and relationship justice.

Running through the OT legislation in this area was both an awareness of living in the ANE and an awareness of being God’s people. Two clear effects are seen in this:-
1) that the wife is given far more rights and protection than most ANE wives.
2) that the standards of marriage and of sexual relationship for God’s people is to reflect the original Creation ordinance of Gen 2:24 – “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh”.

The BBC programme Rome clearly raises the truth about promiscuity: it’s not something new. In fact, the rampant sexuality of Rome was only held in check by the fear of pregnancy and the shame of the lack of virginity on the marriage bed.

These checks have both disappeared. I watched with interest another BBC programme recently No sex please, we’re teenagers, which helpfully showed a group of ordinary promiscuous teenagers from Harrow learning to say no to sex for 5 months. But without the programme they were Bonkus Maximus themselves.

What then can we learn for ourselves from passages such as these?

Sex is for marriage – sleeping around, sleeping with another spouse, rape and incest are all proscribed. In our society today, that is a very difficult message to convey and to live by, because we are under such pressure to let people be ‘free’, to express their sexuality in whatever way they wish.

But free sexual expression is a license to see everybody else as your own personal gratification. That is selfish and potentially idolatrous – it puts ‘me’ and ‘my feelings’ at the centre, and so denies God’s sovereignty and promotes our own needs as the highest value.

Marriage is good – it provides both a place for safe sexual expression, but a place of love, of giving to the other, not self-gratification. It provides a safe place for the birth and raising of children and for the loving worth of each member to be recognized and encouraged.

Whatever fails to promote marriage actually reduces the positive impact marriage has on our society. How sad it is that recent governments have been quick to lessen the promotion of traditional marriage for the sake of political expediency and popularity. We have sown a wind and are reaping the whirlwind – we have broken homes, broken children, broken marriages; we have abused, confused and bemused children; we have sexual crimes condemned on page 1 and free sexual expression praised on page 3.

We promote and encourage the practices of the Canaanites and let us remember: they were thrown out of their land, destroyed as part of God’s punishment for their sin.

Sexuality is God’s gift – we have ignored God’s laws on sexuality as a society, and we in the church are often not much better than those outside. Whether we like it or not, and often we don’t and we look to wriggle out of God’s commands by saying it’s different today, or it’s not the same, or, perhaps worst of all, God will forgive me afterwards, we stray from God’s ways and that is called sin.

We live in the 21st century, not the 12th century BC, God is alive in both and his ways have not changed and sin is just as serious then as it is now. God makes it clear in Scripture that all who are truly penitent, truly sorry, can receive forgiveness, but all sin remains abhorrent to God. He does not grade sin in order of seriousness.

Sexuality is God’s gift to the world. Within the marriage relationship it is to be valued and treasured as the deepest physical expression of human love. Tragically, any of God’s gifts can be misused and diverted from his original purpose and sexual sin, like any other kind of sin, needs to be seen for what it truly is: a damaging power which grieves God, ignores warnings, ruins us and harms others.

The call upon us from such ancient words is a call to both repent and to seek to live to the highest standards. We will fail to do both, but we are called to do both, for the glory of God, the extension of God’s Kingdom and the good of ourselves.